Re: TF: The Crimson Shadow by Una McCormack - Review Thread (Spoilers!
In-universe, is "Castellan" a new position that was invented after the fall of the Dominion? Because there seem to be three or four different titles that have been used over the years for the head of the Cardassian government.
Yeah, the office of Castellan was created when Cardassian democracy took root post-Dominion War.
During the war/under Dominion occupation, IIRC, no specific office was given to the dictator of the Cardassian Union. Skrain Dukat simply declared himself the leader but kept his rank of Gul in the Cardassian Guard. Damar and, for the five minutes he "led" Cardassia, Broca, both held the rank of legate, but no office of state.
According to Una McCormack's
The Never-Ending Sacrifice, Meya Rejal led Cardassia after overthrowing the Central Command in 2372. Her office was Chief Executor of the Detapa Council; it was unclear if this was a new office or a newly-empowered office. In
The Lost Era: The Art of the Impossible, the head of the Detapa Council was called the First Speaker in 2328, though the position was usually much less powerful due to the Central Command essentially monopolizing political power on Cardassia.
Myriad Universes: A Gutted World seems to establish that the office of First Speaker still exists in the 2373 of an alternate timeline where the Cardassians never withdrew from Bajor and were the ones to discover the Bajoran Wormhole -- implying, but not establishing definitively, that the office of Chief Executor back in the Prime Timeline was created after the 2372 coup by Rejal's faction.
So far as I can recall, pre-2372, no one individual could be considered the
de facto head of the Cardassian government, with the Central Command collectively holding power and there being established no one canonical or apocryphal officer in command of the C.C. the way there's a Starfleet C-in-C. (Though I would speculate that there might have been a ceremonial head of state for the purposes of receiving and sending ambassadors and signing treaties and the like, the way the Soviet Union pre-Gorbachev had the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet as nominal head of state, even though the real leader was the head of the Communist Party.)
Should have this tuesday.
